


My Soul To Take

by neversaydie



Series: Like Real People [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, False Memories, Genderqueer Bucky, Hallucinations, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insomnia, M/M, Medical Trauma, Non-Binary Bucky, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-War, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-20 00:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5985709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sleep requires trust. </p><p>The trust that you can leave your body somewhere while you go out into the wilderness and it'll still be there in one piece when you return (he was awake when they took his arm he was awake). You have to leave your body somewhere safe, a suddenly vulnerable shell without anything inside to defend it (they come for him weak and shivering after cryo and he's awake he was awake). It's involuntary, something you can't control. You don't choose sleep, sleep chooses you. </p><p>There's a reason it's called falling asleep, and Bucky doesn't want to fall ever again.</p><p>[Bucky isn't sleeping. Shit hits the fan.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Soul To Take

"Did Billy Donnelly fuck me when we were kids?"

Bucky's brought up a lot of horrible shit in unnervingly casual ways lately, ever since he started on the new drug regime that's been bringing memories back thick and fast. Every couple of days he emerges for breakfast and nonchalantly announces he's responsible for some atrocity or asks if it's alright if they get rid of some type of food or appliance because he remembers what HYDRA did to him with it. So far everything he's recovered has been something that happened during the blank spaces the Asset left, so their general awfulness has been shocking but not exactly surprising.

Until now, anyway.

It's an understatement to say the off-handed question shakes Steve a lot more than the revelation that Bucky had been responsible for the Kennedy assassination, and he manages to clumsily inhale a sip of coffee just to drive the point home. He supposes it shouldn't be something as comparatively mundane as potential rape (and doesn't it say something about how _fucked up_ everything else has been that Steve can even think _rape_ and _mundane_ in the same sentence now) that makes him nearly choke in surprise, but before the war was one time in their lives he'd thought Bucky had managed to experience with comparative peace.

He knows Bucky's vocabulary these days, at least enough to parse out that he doesn't mean anything consensual when he says someone 'fucked him'. Whether it's a way to re-contextualise what was done to him or he just doesn't have the emotional space for the weight of 'rape' yet, his treatment team haven't figured out. It makes Steve queasy just to think about it.

"What?" He manages to splutter out, once he's stopped hacking up a lung just like in the bad old days.

"You need your cigarettes?" Bucky ignores the question as he frowns at Steve with concern, some of that old drawl slipping back into his voice as he crosses the kitchen worriedly. Steve waves him off and Bucky shrugs as the memory of familiar action fades, going for the coffee pot that's already been refilled twice today.

Clint, cause of the empty coffee pot who had the misfortune of coming down for breakfast at the same time as tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee this morning, already looks blindsided by the conversation even as he tries to steer it onto more palatable ground. He's not the smoothest or most subtle of the team (which is saying a lot when that includes Tony Stark), but Clint's spent enough time having his foot stamped on by Natasha to at least try to redirect this potential shitshow before household objects start getting broken. Again.

"You used to smoke?" He offers Steve a way out of the conversation, casually, because Cocoa Puffs are definitely not worth being ambushed by the Trauma Twins while he's barefoot and has nothing to defend himself but purple sweatpants.

"They had special cigarettes to treat asthma. Not pot. …Not always pot." Steve explains in passing, because he really doesn't need to be distracted by Clint's lack of early twentieth-century medical knowledge as he twists over to his shoulder to look at Bucky. The guy is casually filling up his favourite floral-print mug like he hasn't just dropped yet another bombshell on the fragile normality they've managed to carve out in their fucked up half-lives. "What are you talking about, Buck? Billy Donnelly did _what_?"

"I dunno, that's why I'm asking." Bucky doesn't even look up as he adds sugar to his coffee like he hasn't just _fucked up_ Steve's _entire_ head. This has got to be a false memory, they've popped up a couple of times when Steve's been able to corroborate what actually did or didn't happen in a situation, and the question remains how many other memories Bucky's mistaking for something else when there's nobody left alive to confirm or deny them.

"Sure you're thinking about the right guy? Big Billy from across the street?"

"Yeah. Big Billy." Bucky sounds like he has absolutely no feelings on the subject except curiosity as he takes a sip of his coffee, and that just freaks Steve out even more. He's pretty good about at least attempting to show the appropriate emotion when he brings this shit up, and the nonchalance now is more than a little unnerving. "Redhead, his Ma worked with your Ma."

"What d'you mean, did he fuck you?" Steve is definitely on the other side of the emotional scale from _calm_ , and Clint stirs the milk left from his cereal uncomfortably as if he's not sure whether he can bail without setting off this looming time bomb of a conversation. Or he might be calculating how easily he can use the table as a metal fist shield, one of the two.

"I just had a dream, is all. I've been having a lot lately." Bucky sips his coffee again, grimacing at the taste before going to add even more sugar to the mountain he's already poured in there. Only extremes really register with his burnt-out taste buds, and sweet is a current favourite. Nobody needs to see a repeat of when he tried adding tabasco to his coffee.

"Oh, okay. It was a dream." The sigh of relief might be just a little bit too loud, because Bucky quirks an eyebrow and Steve catches Clint shooting him a look from the corner of his eye, but it's already happened and Steve can't take it back. "I'm pretty sure it's one of those mixed-up memory things, Buck. Don't worry. Billy Donnelley wouldn't do that."

He turns back to his tablet before he can see Bucky take one of those hitching breaths, the quiet desperation with his hands wrapped around his mug so they don't give away his nerves, but Clint isn't called Hawkeye for nothing. He catches the stilted movement, the uncertainty on Bucky's face, and swallows a sigh before he re-engages Steve in the conversation. He should be a therapist for the amount of shit he tries to clean off the fan for this fucked-up team.

"How come you're so sure it's a false memory?" Steve looks at him with confusion, because he knows nobody wants to talk about Bucky's horrific past unless they have to, but Clint just keeps his poker face and hopes he's doing the right thing. "You didn't say that off the bat about any of the others."

"Well, it's not like Billy was some HYDRA scumbag. We went to school together, he and Bucky were friends." Steve shakes his head like Clint's only making things worse, but with where Bucky's standing right behind him he can't see the way all nonchalance has drained from his friend's face. That thousand-yard stare is setting in, and Clint _really_ should've taken that extra hour in bed this morning to avoid this. Sleep is safe, after all. "Besides, if anything like that had happened back then Bucky would've told me. It's gotta just be a dream."

Behind him, Bucky's favourite mug hits the tiled floor with a wet _SMASH_.

 

_"We're just helping each other out, buddy."_

_"Get offa me." He kicks. He can feel his knee crack at the extension, overstretched after a day of running, but it doesn't make a difference to the heavy weight and the crush and the smell on top of him. He can't breathe._

_Maybe this is what Steve feels like when his lungs don't work the way they should._

_"You'll like it. Guys do it all the time." The voice is too close, breath hot and slimy against his ear. Panting._

_"Stop—"_

"Bucky. Buck."

It's not the same as last time, not like the dream. The words are the same but this time the tone was different, the noise of traffic and people – had they been outside? – was louder, the smell –

" _Bucky_." Steve sounds panicked, and that's what finally yanks Bucky out of his head enough to register where he is. Kitchen, coffee, Steve. His feet are wet.

"I'm really tired." Is what stumbles out of his mouth before his brain is completely back online. Steve is standing in front of him, hands hovering awkwardly where he can't grab Bucky's shoulders but wants to, and his face softens slightly at the statement.

"Did you sleep any? Except the dream?" Steve doesn't look surprised when Bucky shakes his head; the static, jerked movement of an electric shock. He'd woken up after the nightmare (the memory?) and hadn't been able to go back to sleep after. It's not the reason he checked out, but he's not lying when he says he's tired. He's always tired lately, sleeping feels less restful than being awake since he started taking the new pills.

"You wanna go back to bed?" Steve does touch him when he tries to take a step, two fingers on Bucky's shoulder just to make him pause. "Watch your feet, there's sharp pieces."

"I got 'em." Clint is already hunting out the dustpan and brush. He's surprisingly sensitive to moods and good at anticipating what the people around him need, for all he spends most of his time pretending to be too dumb to count to five. And he very subtly, almost unnoticeably, gets edgy when people start breaking things. "Go get some sleep, man."

In the dim coolness of the bedroom, Steve tucks Bucky back into bed like he's sick or something, like his malfunctioning brain is some kind of flu that will pass with rest and warmth and shitty movies with good company. He offers to stay but Bucky waves him off and curls up on his side, closing his eyes until the door clicks shut and he doesn't have to pretend anymore.

He stands up and leans against the wall, head tipped back and shoulder blades uncomfortable against the hard (reinforced against super soldier nightmare reactions) plaster. He can open a window soon, make it colder so his eyelids won't droop and make him wake up somewhere else. If he's awake then he can make sure nothing happens without his say-so.

Bucky gives it a few hours of staring at nothing before he goes back into the apartment like he's just woken up. Steve offers coffee and smiles at him. It's enough.

 

_Sleep requires trust._

_The trust that you can leave your body somewhere while you go out into the wilderness and it'll still be there in one piece when you return (he was awake when they took his arm he was awake). You have to leave your body somewhere safe, a suddenly vulnerable shell without anything inside to defend it (they come for him weak and shivering after cryo and he's awake he was awake). It's involuntary, something you can't control. You don't choose sleep, sleep chooses you._

_There's a reason it's called falling asleep, and Bucky doesn't want to fall ever again._

 

Like all disasters, it happens gradually and then all at once.

Bucky starts losing moments. Seconds. Sometimes his head will drop in a sudden nod before he catches himself and jerks back up. Other times he'll keep his eyes open but go completely blank, face slackening and mouth hanging open a fraction until he comes back into his head and schools his expression again, shaking his head like he's embarrassed to be caught slipping out of his body like a ghost.

He starts losing the thread of conversations too, which happens occasionally already but not like this. He has an entire conversation where he thinks Sam lives in the Tower until Steve reminds him that Sam's just visiting from DC. The confusion is something the new medication had been helping with, and Bucky hasn't filled in any blanks with fantasy for a long time, but now everything seems to have slid backwards at a rate of knots.

Steve hears him whispering to someone in the bathroom one night. That's when he decides it's time to let someone know that there might be a problem.

"It could be absence seizures." The neurologist suggests, clearly frustrated as he flips through the very thin file of Bucky's actual medical examinations.

The main components of Bucky's treatment team meet with Steve once a month or so to compare notes about progress and address any issues that Bucky won't bring up himself. The checking-out of conversations and micro-sleeps are one of those issues, this time. Bucky thinks Steve is visiting Peggy right now, when he has these necessary but clandestine meetings, and the guilt of the white lie itches at him like a healing scab.

"These brain scans are way out of date." The doctor mutters to himself irritably as he reaches the end of the file again. "They're as good as useless."

"He won't get new ones." Steve is less frustrated in spite of his worry, maybe because he knows how Bucky feels about being strapped down and put into another machine. Nobody would survive the attempt so it's not worth pressing the issue. "I don't think he's sleeping right, that might be a factor."

"Definitely. And that's a worrying prospect because he was functioning on extremely minimal sleep in the first place." The doctor sighs, settling on one scan and turning it around so Steve can see the image of Bucky's brain, marred by blank spaces of scar tissue and lit up in red like a forest fire. "Lack of sleep could explain a lot of what you've been seeing. It'd make him emotionally unstable and lethargic, yes. But it'll also make him less able to distinguish between what's real and what he's imagining. In an extreme case he could hallucinate."

"We haven't seen anything like that so far." Steve hedges his bets with 'haven't seen', because anything could be going on behind the scenes with Bucky and they'd never know until he reached breaking point. He tries to pretend his stomach isn't in his boots right now. "He had a false memory come up a few weeks ago, that might have started it."

"Well, this scan is from just before he was institutionalised." The doctor points at patches highlighted in red and Steve's gut lurches with a rollercoaster roll of nausea. The only reason they'd been able to do initial medical examinations on Bucky was because nobody realised he was obeying implied orders on fear of torture at the time. It wasn't until the breakdown that they realised just how deep the conditioning went. "His brain was on alert all the time here, it's overactive in all the areas we'd expect to see associated with anxiety, fight or flight. At the time we didn't know he was having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, but that's something sleep deprivation could contribute to. Especially since he didn't give off any indications of it last time."

"So you're saying he could be hallucinating again and we…" The idea hits him like a physical blow, and Steve sits back heavily in his seat. He remembers Bucky thinking Sam lived in the Tower, whispering to someone in an empty bathroom, and terror grips the back of his neck like ice. "He could be seeing things and we wouldn't know?"

"It's possible. He woke up in different decades with different people around him every time, _he_ might not even realise if he's hallucinating. He's had to rationalise things that would terrify normal people just to survive." The neurologist doesn't shrug, too professional for that, but he sounds resigned when he finishes his statement, even in the face of Steve's obvious concern. "I'm fairly certain nobody knows anything about Mr Barnes unless he decides to tell them. I think he's the only one you can ask about this and get an answer that's not pure speculation."

"You say that like he'd talk to me." Steve lets out a hollow laugh that's barely more than a sigh and the doctor pulls a tight, humourless smile in sympathy.

Talking to Bucky about what's going on in his head. _That_ always goes well.

 

_Biting the inside of its cheek works for a little while. It has a strange memory of a cartoon man putting matchsticks between his eyelids to stay awake, but that proves ineffective. Punching its leg doesn't work. Scraping its wrist over the exposed brick wall beside the rifle works best of all, but the blood is tacky - is DNA - is not allowed - and it can't even lick it up because that's DNA too._

_It has methods. Fear of the consequences of sleeping through a shot is the most effective. It only made that mistake once._

 

"Doc says you're not sleeping."

"So?" It's barely a question with the way Bucky delivers it, flat and unaffected except for a little streak of petulance running underneath the word. He's trying to paint his nails, flesh hand shaking just slightly and leaving shiny pink smears over the edge of metal nail beds. Bucky could never colour inside the lines even when they were children, and the messiness is oddly comforting. Familiar.

"It's not good for you." Steve steps into the room and holds out his hand, low and unthreatening as always when establishing where Bucky's mind is at. Bucky's jaw twitches irritably for a second, but he gives in and puts the tiny bottle of polish in Steve's hand with only a little reluctance. "But you know that."

"It's none of your business, the doc shouldn't even talk to you." He shuffles over so Steve can sit on the bed beside him, resting his hand lightly on the rough denim of Steve's jeans so he can start painting the nails on his flesh hand.

"I know. I'm just worried." Steve is deft in spite of his thick fingers that dwarf the small brush, applying the polish in what's now a practiced, dextrous motion. If only Fox News could see Captain America now. "I hear you walking around at night and stuff, y'know?"

"Sorry I woke you." Bucky mumbles, letting his head list sideways and rest lightly on Steve's shoulder. It's progress, a big step towards normal human contact that he'd backslid on for a long time after the incident with Dr Khan. Being cuddly with Steve (this counts as cuddly at the moment) seems like a step in the right direction.

"You didn't, I wake up a lot." Steve gingerly rests his cheek on Bucky's head, breathing in the familiar smell that settles his chest because it's familiar as New York air. "Is there something bothering you about sleeping? I get nightmares too, maybe—"

"Don't worry about it. It'll pass." He straightens up quickly, a prickle of irritation pinching his neck because _you said it was just a dream how can I make you believe it's a memory you fucking asshole_. The vicious thought swims in out of nowhere and it makes Bucky feel slightly sick, he needs to get alone if the violence is starting again. "I'm kinda tired now, actually. You mind if I take a nap?"

"Course not." It's too easy to get Steve to press a light kiss to his hair and stand up again, setting the polish neatly on the nightstand. Bucky thinks everyone except maybe Natasha forgets who he is sometimes, because it's far too easy to manipulate them into seeing a fragile, damaged human who needs to be treated with care when it suits him. "Sam's coming over to watch the game, that okay?"

"Yeah, Steve. I ain't your wife." Bucky deadpans with an impressive eye-roll, and the little flash of accent is enough to cause a bright bubble of laughter from Steve's chest. Too easy to deflect attention, he should be the one holding the shield. "Save me pizza."

"No promises." Steve quips, as if Bucky doesn't already know there'll be a plastic-wrapped plate in the fridge with most of an entire pizza on it before Steve and Sam have even finished eating. "Sleep well, Buck."

"Do my best." He makes a show of lying down until Steve is out of the room, then gets up silently and drops to the side of his bed that's obscured from the door.

Cardio should keep him awake. Increased circulation plus something for his scattered mind to focus on, even if he'll pay for it with a massive calorie debt later. Sometimes working out to the point of exhaustion allows him to pass out for an hour or so without dreams ( _memories they're fucking memories I'm not making them up you stupid fuck_ ), but it'll take several hours to get to that point. He'd better start now, because not even the Winter Soldier can do push-ups quietly enough for Steve not to hear when the rest of the apartment is silent.

Bucky lays out his safe sweater on the floor just under the bed before he starts. When he passes out, he'd like to be able to do it on something soft, even if he doesn't deserve it.

Six hours later, he doesn't pass out. Bucky buries his face in the soft pink fabric and gives into tears where no one can see. They made him to work past exhaustion, he should have known that trying to escape HYDRA was futile. 

 

_"Bucky. Bucky. Bucky!"_

"What?!" Bucky twists around to glare at Steve irritably over the back of the couch. He and Natasha are sitting at the kitchen island and look up at his outburst, startled. Steve's been calling his name like an asshole for at least five minutes, so Bucky doesn't care if they're surprised when he finally gives in and responds. "What do you want?"

"Nothing." Steve says, slowly, with that expression that suggests Bucky's acting weirdly again.

"You called my name nine thousand times." He's used to Steve being a little shit (he convinced Bucky that Sister Catherine had lizard legs under her habit when they were kids, but to be fair it was a stifling summer and everyone was slightly delirious and suggestible), so he just narrows his eyes and intensifies his scowl. "Stop it."

"I didn't say anything." There's a bewildered look on Steve's face, uncertainty fading to concern, but Bucky just rolls his eyes because it wouldn't be the first time he's played innocent after being an asshole and he's way too tired for this shit.

"Maybe you fell asleep for a minute." Natasha suggests, quietly. Her face is a lot harder to read than Steve's open book, but Bucky can see the minutest crease between her eyebrows that suggests she's concerned too. That just pisses him off more because he's getting really sick and tired of people acting like he can't take care of himself.

"Fuck off." He grunts, turning back to the TV like he gives a shit about what's playing. Denial is always a good option. He's fine.

 

_The Commander is unhappy._

The Commander isn't here. That's what Bucky keeps telling himself. Nobody else can see Rumlow, nobody else interacts with him and unless they're under unusual mission parameters to act like—

That's paranoid. The team aren't HYDRA.

_SHIELD wasn't supposed to be HYDRA._

_SHIELD tried to burn the world._

The Commander whispers in Bucky's ear when there's nobody else around to hear him. When there's nobody to verify whether there's actually someone talking or whether what's left of Bucky's razed brain is playing tricks on him. Night time is the worst, when the walls of his room bend and ripple and he can't swim through the molasses exhaustion pinning his limbs to the bed so he can't squirm away from the Commander when he—

_The voice is too close, breath hot and slimy against his ear. Soldier we're very disappointed in you guys do it all the time we're just helping each other out. Panting. You'll like it._

Bucky digs his fingers into his temples so hard he leaves bruises. He could easily shove his fingers right through where the bone is thinnest and into the skinless, scarred mess behind. He could shut the Commander up for good, he could shut himself up for good, he could _sleep_.

_"Machines don't need sleep. You know you can't control yourself. You need order."_

"Shut up." Bucky presses his palms over his ears and curls forward to smack his head against the edge of the bathtub, fighting the urge to keen like a wounded animal as he hisses back at the Commander. It just won't _stop_. "Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Leave me alone!"

"Buck?" Steve speaking outside the locked bathroom door is probably real. Verifiable by outside sources. Bucky raises his head and feels like he's going to pass out because of the sudden loss of pressure. He could squeeze hard enough to break his skull open if he— "Buck, are you okay? I thought I heard—"

"Talking to the cat." He blurts out quickly, no idea if Steve will believe him or not and not really needing him to. He just needs everyone to leave him alone.

There's a long pause. Bucky can hear Steve's struggle to decide what the hell to say to him when he clearly doesn't believe a word and he's sick of having to lie and pretend and—

"Jager's out here, Buck." Steve finally says, cautious and slow and so close to the door that Bucky could break his ribs through it if he aimed right. He could snap him into tiny fucking pieces and then he'd be quiet.

"I'm fine. Go away." There's nothing else to say, because now the excuse didn't work and he's going to be punished _and the Commander is grinning at him from the shower stall and turning the hose on—_

"Bucky—"

"Go away!" He throws something ( _phone_ , his brain supplies belatedly, but he can't stop thinking of the damn thing as a computer) at the door and it shatters into pieces of metal and reinforced plastic. Not big enough to dig into his eyes and— "Leave me alone!"

He ignores the string of concerned words from the other side of the door and climbs into the empty bathtub, curling in on himself and bracing his back and knees against the plastic so he feels contained. It's almost like the cryo tube, almost safe.

 _"We're just helping each other out, buddy."_ The Commander breathes in his ear, because he's not in cryo and he's not safe and he never will be again. _"You'll like it."_

 

In front of the team, Bucky generally keeps his shit together. Partly because self-consciousness puts a straitjacket on his behaviour and partly because the paranoia that they're just waiting to put him down has never fully abated, no matter how friendly they get. That sense of behaving himself outside the privacy of the apartment (the breakdowns have got worse, the mirrors are shattered, Steve has hidden the knives and given the cat to Sam for a while) degrades steadily the longer he goes without sleeping.

It starts off with impatience here and there, loss of concentration and loud comments about how stupid their missions are (which is close to original-issue Bucky at the Commandos' briefings so Steve doesn't catch it as a red flag to begin with), and culminates in a meltdown over plans to destroy a disused HYDRA base in Siberia. Bucky insists on going with them, not deterred by the reasonable concerns the rest of the team put forward. He's been acting strangely throughout the briefing, and Steve putting his foot down as team leader is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

"There's no way you're going into the field like this." He's trying very hard to keep his voice neutral, but Bucky's been appalling to everyone throughout this briefing and he's acting like a petulant child right now. "You'd be a danger to yourself and everyone around you."

"It's not the field." Bucky snaps, glowering above the punched-out dark circles under his eyes that give him a greater air of menace than usual. He's gone from confused to irritable over the last couple of days and Steve is starting to wonder just how long he can carry on like this. "It's a fuckin' HYDRA base and I want in."

"I really don't think it's a good—" Banner tries to break in and defuse the situation, pull the two of them back from another one of the arguments that are getting more frequent and explosive lately, but Bucky cuts him off viciously.

"Did I ask you what the _fuck_ you think?" _That_ shocks everyone onto the back-foot, because Bucky loves Bruce and he's never been anything but friendly and calm with him. They're both fighting to contain a monster and it's created a bond, which Bucky's exhaustion seems to have frayed to breaking point.

"Have you been drinking?" Barton squints at him and Bucky gives him the finger in response, as if the smell of cheap vodka hasn't been rolling off him in waves since he came into the room. It's a redundant question, but Clint is trying to reassure Bruce that Bucky isn't actually mad at him more than anything else. He's always the first to try and smooth things over, and a Code Green is _all_ they need right now. "Man, I thought you guys couldn't—"

"I can't." Steve cuts him off, maintaining eye contact with Bucky to try and anticipate if he's going to get violent. The outbursts are becoming more frequent and public, and for Steve they never really get less frightening. "He can. Not as much as you guys but—"

"It doesn't fuckin' matter. I want to go blow up the people who tortured me, is that _okay_ with you?" It's a subtle shift in posture, a stiffening of the spine and squaring of the shoulders that takes him from _Bucky_ to _Soldier_ , but it might as well have dropped the temperature in the room by ten degrees for the way it makes everyone freeze. They're sitting around a table but they might as well be battle-ready for how unrelaxed it is. "Do I gotta consult my fuckin' _treatment team_ and get a permission slip?"

"Bucky—"

"If you wanted me locked up you should've left me with HYDRA." His voice is icy cold as he reaches out and pulls one of the pictures scattered across the table in front of him, stabbing his finger onto the grainy image of mysterious machinery. "This is an open cryofreeze chamber. They kept me standing up in there for ten years. I want. In."

"Being exposed to stuff that's gonna trigger your memories isn't good for you right now, Buck." Steve tries to talk him down, pretends he can't see that various members of the team have drawn their weapons and Tony has his finger on the 'Terminator containment procedure' panic button. "You're still not goddamn sleeping. You're erratic and—"

The wrong track to take, as it turns out.

"I've done sleep deprivation. I've done ops drugged out my mind. I've done solo ops and been dropped in the middle of a fuckin' wilderness with no extraction plan and I escaped HYDRA _on my own_. You assholes couldn't even see SHIELD committing atrocities under your fuckin' nose." Bucky shoves himself out of his chair and almost falls over when the head rush hits him hard. Bruce reaches out to steady him but Bucky pulls away, the image of disarray as he almost trips over his feet in spite of his rage. He's not so steady in himself since the exhaustion intensified and that's _exactly_ why he's not going into the field. "I'm not a fuckin' baby you need to coddle, I could kill all of you if I wanted!"

"Do you want to?" Natasha is surprisingly calm about the outburst, but Steve can tell she has her hands on at least two lethal weapons right now in case Bucky needs to be neutralised. He's just as ready to stop her if she tries, but everything is muddled and unclear and the good and bad aren't obvious to him.

Steve would catch a bullet for Bucky in a heartbeat, but right now he's not convinced that it's not Bucky who wants to pull the trigger.

"You'd already be dead if I did." Bucky spits, smashing his fist into the wall in frustration as he stalks out of the briefing room.

He doesn't come to Siberia with them. He locks himself in his room and refuses to come out for five days, and it's not until Steve has actually left the building that JARVIS informs them he's emerged from his self-inflicted captivity. His vitals are totally out of whack, even for a super soldier, and he refuses to speak to the team or any of his doctors.

_"I wasn't fuckin' lying! I didn't make it up! He did it, I didn't imagine it!"_

JARVIS sends Steve footage of him screaming that at the cameras, before dropping into a crouch and muttering desperately for someone to leave him alone. Steve can't pull out of the op, not when they're thirty minutes from the drop site, but he tries to call, pacing with increasing frustration in the back of the quinjet and trying to ignore the eyes of the rest of the team on his back. Bucky never picks up, his voicemail turned off and JARVIS unable to make him answer even when he informs him over the speakers that Captain Rogers is trying to get in touch.

Steve takes out his aggression on HYDRA. He leaves the people in the base for the rest of the team, because he doesn't trust himself not to use 'excessive force' and have to answer for it, so he concentrates on obliterating the base until there's nothing left that can hurt anyone. He destroys batches of weapons, files they've already data-mined, and every single personal effect he can find because how _dare_ they be people when they treated Bucky like less than an animal.

The cryofreeze machine is beetle-black, shiny and sinister where it emerges from the floor so people can walk over it and use the room when the Asset isn't required. The thick tubes and fine wires hang limply like empty veins from the roof of the chamber, a weak blue glow still pulsing from somewhere above where Bucky's head would have been. Where they wouldn't let him sleep and he didn't even get to lie down.

Steve tears it apart with his bare hands. Natasha finds him with bloody palms and tears in his eyes and pulls him away from the wreckage. Somehow gets him back onto the jet and gives him the time to pull himself together before they get home. At least he'll be able to tell Bucky there's one less place to fear.

Bucky is back in his room again. Won't come out, won't speak, won't even give them a sign he's alive. JARVIS informs Steve that his vital signs are present and he's not in immediate danger, but it's not a great comfort. Steve sleeps the first night on the floor outside Bucky's door and dreams about Billy Donnelly and false memories and Bucky screaming at someone who isn't there.

_"I didn't imagine it!"_

_"Stop it!" He tries to kick away again. It's a chubby teenager and the solid bulk of the Commander and soft gone to seed muscle of the Director and—_

_He's awake. They took his arm and he's awake. They come for him and he's awake. He's awake he can't escape he can't leave he can't even disappear into his head he can't he can't—_

_Being frozen is a blessing. Falling is a blessing. Falling is nothing but the wind and the cold that burns –_

_Say it with me Stevie now I lay me down to sleep—_

"Steve. _Steve_."

He's aware enough to stop himself coming up swinging. Even shaken from sleep at three in the morning, Steve isn't going to punch Bucky in the face when he'd know him just from the touch of his fingertips, but it doesn't stop him being confused as hell. He jerks awake with a sharp gasp, freezing and falling and landing into consciousness with a jolt.

Bucky is practically on top of him, one knee up on the bed as he grips Steve's shoulders tight enough to hurt. He would have bruised a normal person by now, not that Steve would ever tell him that. The wildness and naked fear in Bucky's expression kills any quip Steve might have tried to make dead in his throat.

"What's happening?" He sits up with desperate fingers still digging into his shoulders like Bucky can't let go. "Buck, what's wrong?"

"Don't let me go to sleep." Bucky looks dreadful. The dark circles under his eyes look more like his anti-glare face paint than something human, eyes wide and desperate under the greasy, frazzled mess of his hair that he's not bothering to push out of his face. "You've gotta stop me. I-I don't wanna fall."

"Hey, you're okay. You're not gonna fall." Steve gingerly reaches up to pry Bucky's hands off his shoulders, wincing when he sees the deep red gouge marks in his flesh arm. He's been scratching himself with his metal hand to try and stay awake, has broken the skin this time. "Bucky, look at me. I'm not gonna let you fall."

"I-I'm gonna hurt someone. I can't control it. You've gotta k-keep me awake." His speech is stuttery and slurred and Steve can see his head nodding just a fraction every few seconds, like he's fighting hard to stay awake even though he's hit the absolute limit of exhaustion. "P-Put me in the machine."

"Buck, we don't…" This is like a nightmare unfolding in front of him. Steve has no idea what Bucky thinks is really happening or even how conscious he really is, and the sheer desperation in his begging is piercing his heart with a cold needle of guilt.

 _You did this to him_ , his conscience hisses, _you let him fall._

"We don't have a machine, Buck. You don't need—"

"No! No no no no… I need…" There are tears welling in Bucky's already-bloodshot eyes and Steve is overtaken by a wave of terror at the idea that there's _nothing_ he can do to make this better. "Help me. Please, p-please, I don't wanna hurt anyone."

"Okay, Buck. Okay. Take a deep breath." Steve has exactly _no_ idea what he's doing, but he forces some authority into his wavering voice because that's what Bucky responds to. He can treat this like the field, he can be the Captain even in these desperate circumstances because he always does what he has to, damn the fallout on himself. "What does the machine feel like?"

"C-Cold." Bucky seems to shiver at just the thought, before his head rolls down in another micro-sleep and he jerks it back up in a panic. "Cold. Sharp. It hurts."

"You don't…" There's no point in trying to convince Bucky he doesn't need to be put in cryofreeze, Steve realises, because from the look of things he's barely registering anything around him anymore. It took the last of his mental ability to get to Steve and ask for help, all he's responding to now is the chain of command. "C'mon pal, get up. Can you walk?"

The answer to that is clearly no, as Bucky manages to stay on his feet for only a few seconds before his knees buckle and he'd hit the carpet if Steve didn't catch him. He half-carries Bucky down the hall to the bathroom, thinking on his feet and heading for the shower. This isn't ideal and it might not work, but he's pretty sure anything is better than Bucky being drugged to sleep against his will again.

There's a chair still in the corner from when Steve cut Bucky's hair (which was a while ago, maybe Sam's right that they're borderline hoarders), so he props Bucky up against the shower wall and then grabs it, shoving it into the stall and helping his friend sit down heavily. The cryo machine was upright, so the feeling won't be perfect (what a fucking terrible word for _everything_ to do with this), but he's not sure Bucky could stand up on his own.

"Special measures." He tries to sound like he knows what he's doing, probably failing miserably, before he gives in and squeezes Bucky's shoulder quickly before he backs off. "Making this up as I go, sorry buddy."

Bucky straight-up screams when he turns the cold water on, a strangled sound that dies as quickly as it starts before Steve can panic and shut off the water again. Bucky's head lolls back to rest against the tile and Steve reaches out to gently turn it sideways so he doesn't breathe in any water. Cracked lips hang open slackly as Bucky mumbles something Steve can't hear over the shower, so he turns down the water enough to try and figure out what's going on in Bucky's head before he passes out.

"…Luke and John, bless the bed I sleep on." The hoarse prayer is quiet, well-worn like folded paper that's one false move from ripping. Steve feels like it sounds right now. "One to watch... pray… two… please take my soul away…"

The words fade off into silence as Bucky's eyes finally, mercifully slip closed.

 

By the time dawn breaks, Bucky is gone.

 _DON'T LOOK FOR ME_ is printed in shaky capital letters on a pink, heart-shaped post-it note stuck to the fridge.

 _NOT A DREAM_ is on the reverse when Steve rips it from the fridge with trembling fingers, steadier and thicker-lined like Bucky was _sure_ of it. Like he got past needing someone to believe him once he believed himself.

Steve sinks to sit on the kitchen floor with a hand over his mouth, small and fragile inside the body that weighs him down now like sluggish meat. He wants to run, he wants to rip the door open and chase Bucky until he finds him. He wants to hold him and tell him he's sorry, rip the nightmares out of his head until he realises he's _safe_. Pray over him all night if that's what it takes to make him sleep. Pray for whatever cruel power is pulling their strings to finally, finally let them rest.

But like a ghost in the night, like a dream, he's gone with the darkness like he was never here. It feels like falling and, as the days turn into weeks, it doesn't stop.


End file.
